Tall girls and fruit

When I was twenty-four I dated a girl Lisa, who I truly loved. She was in fact a bitch to me, but at the time I didn't see it. Anyway, eventually Lisa broke up with me and I was as devastated as a boy could get. I resorted to only eating watermelons and mangos in the shower (which is awesome by the way). This saved time and allowed me more time to mope around. I couldn't be bothered to cook. I just wanted write letters to her, compose songs, and steep in the glory of my own magnificent sorrow. 

A few days later Lisa called me. She wanted to say goodbye in a better way, because she was moving to New York. She asked if I would meet her for a drink. I was so happy! Yes, I would meet her for a drink. Later in the evening I walked down to the bar where she wanted to meet. We met. We talked. It was nice and cathartic, until my friend Wes showed up. 

Lisa and Wes were getting along swimmingly well. So well, in fact, that I felt the need to extricate myself from the situation. I walked to another bar and drank way too much. Around 2am I started to walk home. I was in front of a stone church when my phone rang. It was Lisa. I was eager to hear her voice. On the other end I heard her and Wes mid-coitus. It had been a pocket dial. The most untimely pocket dial in the history of cellular phones. My body literally turned to a liquid and I melted into the bushes. Sporadically I remember strangers checking on me, walking by and pondering this well-dressed kid in the bushes crying and writhing around. I stayed there being cradled by those bushes until the sun came up and there was just too much foot traffic to make suffering publicly a reasonable option for me.

Story of the real wooden pig

So about seven years ago I was in the Philippines with my sweet and wonderful girlfriend at the time, Rosie. We had flown to this sliver of an island with an opalescent coastline. The island, besides being beautiful, also had what was considered to be the best restaraunt in the Philippines. We had been there about two days when I said, "Tonight, I'm taking you to the nicest restaurant in the country. Wear your fanciest dress." Now in any other country in the world I would not have said that to Rosie, because she took her dressing up dead seriously. But I thought: we are here in the middle of nowhere, right next to Borneo, she doesn't have access to her wardrobe or her hair devices, she will dress down. Oops. Apparently she had packed a beautiful yellow gown in case they moved the Academy Awards to the Philippines that night and Rosie was asked to present. Her hair and make up were perfect. She was prepared. 

When it was time to go, we walked out our hotel doors and everyone was dumbstruck by her beauty. I tried getting a motorcycle taxi, but there were none. So we decided to walk...through a what I can only describe as a trash slum. I could feel Rosie wedging her body up next to mine as if she wanted to hide in me. The attention she garnered at first quickly turned into something scary. Little men with no teeth and no shirts started to jeer and holler at her. She started to cry on my neck. I never showed it, but I was afraid there too for a little while. We got to the restaurant on time and it really was amazing. After dinner we strolled outside. This time I was getting us a taxi. Next to the restaurant was a little shop that sold wood carvings. I bought her some little boats. She bought me a wooden pig.

This will be my last story that involves death...sorry, we will call this story "Pintura"

When I was a young boy I had a neighbor named Milt. I loved Milt like a second father. He would always take me on adventures and give me outboard motors to fix up. Once he gave me superglue to attach quarters to the sidewalk, which was so funny by the way. Anyway, years later he was in Costa Rica skydiving like he always did. On this day however his airplane crashed into the Pacific. He and everyone on board died. There was one lucky fellow who did survive. He was young like me. He had jumped out of the plane just prior to its crashing. This young man survived in the sea for at least a day fending off salt water crocodiles and bull sharks before he was picked up by a Japanese freighter. A few days later at Milt's funeral, I would meet him.

So, the evening prior to the funeral I had made a really awesome paper airplane. I was having lots of fun throwing it around, until it got stuck way up in a tree and I decided to retrieve it. That is when I fell and dislocated my shoulder. I went to the ER and they repositioned it, gave me some painkillers and a sling.

The next day I went to the funeral looking all bruised and battered with my arm in a sling. People kept coming up to me and bringing me cookies and shaking my hand. One lady looked me in the eye and held back tears and told me I was brave. As it turned out the young man who escaped the crash was at the funeral and people were clearly mistaking me for him. That didn't stop me from accepting a little pampering. When I talked to the guy, he was really nice. His plane crashed, he was stranded at sea, and he looked great. Then, there was me. I fell climbing a tree to get a paper airplane. And I looked like a beaten-down street fighter. Just so you know, I paid some neighbor kids to get that paper airplane down from the tree.

This story is dedicated to Katrina

Firecrackers

This story is about my sister's boyfriend Bryan. For this story, to protect the innocent, I will refer to him as Brian. Brian lost the use of his hands when he was in high school but that didn't stop him from building huge stone bridges or using Roman candles to light refuse piles on fire. 

I would call him T. Rex behind his back, because his arms had atrophied long ago and it made him look like a tyrannosaurus. He kept jars of bouncy balls on his dusty window sill. He liked to show them off, but it was always awkward because he couldn't catch the balls once they were bounced. He had a beautiful didgeridoo that he kept perched atop a red couch in the living room. I would blow on it and make humming noises until I felt nauseous. 

One Thanksgiving I drove 3000 miles from California to New York with an awesome crossbow to kill a turkey and cook it for my family. There were turkeys all over his property…but he was like NO KILLING TURKEYS on my property. I listened to him. Later on in the early hours of the morning, I went out back to pee in the snow because I like to do that. I realized mid-pee that I was actually peeing on his skill saw. I didn't move an inch. Whatever. His decision resulted in me having to go to a WalMart to buy a turkey! 

I would sometimes search for antique bottles and trilobite fossils with him. He claimed to know where some flowers were that I really wanted to see. Some little yellow lady slippers. He was never able to produce them. Once on a long hike we came across an old cabin where the garden had escaped itself. There were daffodils everywhere, little yellow flowers protruding from the undergrowth. If he thought that those daffodils were going to make up for the mythical lady slippers, he was wrong.   

Last week Brian died and I find myself remembering him fondly. It is an interesting trait in people that we remember the good qualities of the deceased. Brian is lucky in that sense. There were things that even I loved about him. I would never have admitted that while he was alive, but it's true.

Rest in peace, Bryan.

We start again

So I haven't been doing anything on this blog for about six months. You see, one of my biggest fans died and I haven't felt it appropriate.  Many of you have expressed a wish that I do more posts. I will oblige you now. It is in fact one of my favorite things to do. To write these little stories for you. I like being poetic without being poetic. I like writing like I talk. So I will resume this blog today. I just needed to let it breathe while I mourned the death of my friend Joey. She and I had a complicated relationship that I have needed to explain many times since her death. I was always able to make her laugh--up until about an hour before she died. She wasn't in the mood then. I'm sorry, Joey. I miss you and I love you, but it is time for me to write ridiculous stories again.